Delete windows installation without formatting?

Hi and welcome to SevenForums. Maybe it would be easier if you tell us what you DON'T want to delete...

Walker
Windows Outreach Team

I agree with walker. One method immediate comes to mind, but it depends on what you're trying to keep from being deleted.

Welcome to Seven Forums dominique120. What is it you are trying to accomplish? Is this a dual boot system, and you want to remove one OS without losing the data files?

A Guy

Hello Dominique, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Whatever reason you have for this admittedly a little bit odd question, these two methods should cover all possible situations.

If you want to do a clean install without formatting the hard disk, then just do a custom install and afterwards simply delete the Windows.old folder which is created by new installation. All the stuff you mentioned, old Windows, is moved to this folder, so you get a fresh, clean Windows and you get rid of everything you mentioned.

If installation without formatting is not what you want, copy everything else (stuff you want to keep) to another drive, format the drive in question, and copy your stuff back.

Kari

Footnote: I don't normally think too much what's the OP's purpose, what is he / she looking for as long as the question is valid. But I have to admit this time I'm really interested Would be nice to hear why you think you need to do this?

If you don't have a second drive, I suggest opening disk management, shrinking your current partition, and create a new one with the unallocated space. Move your data files and what ever else you need to the new partition. Shutdown, boot using an instillation disc, format the partition with your OS, you should then be able to then extend the data partition, or worst case scenario, have two partitions used for data.